Notes to pp. 35–36 497giant brownish-yellow Great Dane (the Great Dane of my childhood). This
dog stood on her hind legs and wore evening dress. I accepted her com-
pletely and had the feeling for the first time in my life that I knew how to
dance. We kissed several times, the dog and I. Woke up very satisfied.’
Adorno, Traumprotokolle, mid-September 1958, Theodor W. Adorno
Archive, Frankfurt am Main, TS 51772.
37 Adorno, Musikalische Aphorismen, GS, vol. 18, p. 35.
38 The award took place on 13 June 1935, as can be seen from a document in
the Theodor W. Adorno Archive, according to which, ‘in the name of the
Führer and Reichskanzler, the... Cross of Honour for War Service has
been awarded to the businessman Oscar Wiesengrund... in memory of the
World War 1914–1918.’
39 Georg Voigt was mayor of Frankfurt from 1912 to 1924. ‘Unlike his
predecessors (Johann Franz von Miquel and Franz Adickes) he belonged
on the left rather than in the National Liberal camp, and in this respect he
reflected more adequately the political complexion of the city.’ Wilfried
Forstmann, ‘Frankfurt am Main in wilhelminischer Zeit 1866–1914’, p. 375ff.
40 ‘Only the firm alliance of the SPD with the Centre Party and the left-liberal
Democrats, as the pillars of the so-called Weimar Coalition, could enable
the city to function.’ Dieter Rebentisch, ‘Frankfurt am Main in der Weimarer
Republik und im Dritten Reich 1918–1945’, p. 438ff.
41 St Paul’s Church had been the location for the Constituent Assembly in the
short-lived revolution of 1848–9 and has traditionally been regarded as the
standard-bearer of German liberalism [trans.].
42 In Adorno’s critique of Lukács in 1958, he defended the latter’s early
writings – Soul and Form, The Theory of the Novel and History and Class
Consciousness – against his later writings in which Lukács had sought to
adapt himself to the dreary level of Soviet thought. Adorno focused on
Lukács’s The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, which appeared in German
in 1956. Here he comments: ‘The core of his theory remains dogmatic. The
whole of modern literature is dismissed except where it can be classified
as either critical or socialist realism, and the odium of decadence is heaped
on it without a qualm, even though such abuse brings with it all the horrors
of persecution and extermination, and not only in Russia’ (Adorno,
‘Reconciliation under duress’, in Ernst Bloch et al., Aesthetics and Politics,
p. 154). In its incisiveness and its pointed emphasis, Adorno’s critique in
the year of the publication of Lukács’s book left nothing to be desired. At
a conference ten years later, he met Agnes Heller, Lukács’s most prominent
student, who had repudiated her teacher’s orthodoxy in her own way. He
used the occasion to ask her to mediate between him and Lukács. ‘Up to
then, he said, they had only abused and slandered each other, but now he
would like to get on speaking terms once again.’ See Agnes Heller, Der
Affe auf dem Fahrrad, p. 239.
43 Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) finished his course in philosophy after only six
semesters with a dissertation on epistemological problems. Disillusioned by
academic philosophy, he worked as an independent writer, partly for the
Frankfurter Zeitung. He moved in the intellectual circles that had formed
around Georg Simmel in Berlin and Max Weber in Heidelberg. Towards
the end of the 1920s Adorno, who was eighteen years younger than Bloch,
met him in Berlin for the first time, thanks to introductions from Siegfried